


The Amateur's Guide to Outstanding Projection

by phonecallfromgod



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: 2010s, Alternate Universe - High School, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, House Party, Multi, Non-Explicit Sex, Summer Vacation, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29835924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phonecallfromgod/pseuds/phonecallfromgod
Summary: Look, Eduardo’s a romantic, okay? He considers When Harry Met Sally to be one of the best films ever made, he has opinions on where his future Honeymoon will take place, and when he had a girlfriend he knew how to pull out the stops for special occasions. It’s not like he can’t appreciate the mushier side of love.But Eduardo is also a realist and a firm believer in the fact that people tend to act first and foremost in their own interest.
Relationships: Divya Narendra/Cameron Winklevoss, Dustin Moskovitz/Christy Lee, Eduardo Saverin/Mark Zuckerberg
Comments: 13
Kudos: 14





	The Amateur's Guide to Outstanding Projection

Look, Eduardo’s a romantic, okay? He considers When Harry Met Sally to be one of the best films ever made, he has opinions on where his future honeymoon will take place, and when he _had_ a girlfriend he knew how to pull out the stops for special occasions. It’s not like he can’t appreciate the mushier side of love. 

But Eduardo is also a realist and a firm believer in the fact that people tend to act first and foremost in their own interest. 

Which is why when at the start of the last school year Divya Narendra announced that he was bi during his Vice Presidency campaign speech, followed very closely by Cameron Winklevoss coming out as gay, no one, least of all Eduardo, was particularly shocked when they went to Homecoming together and swiftly transitioned into dating. 

Especially because, on top of the obvious thing in common, Divya and Cameron travelled in nearly identical National Merit Scholar-esque circles and had half of their AP classes together even though Divya was a junior and Cameron was a senior. It just made a certain kind of sense that they would start dating, the same way no one would be shocked if the head cheerleader got together with the captain of the football team. 

And it certainly didn’t hurt that on top of Cameron holding a 3.9 GPA and being the Nationally Ranked Captain of the crew team, his twin brother Tyler was the student council president to Divya’s VP. There was a certain acknowledged mutual beneficiary to their arrangement that Eduardo honestly respected more than most of the couples at their school who thought the hormonal rush they were experiencing was Actually True Love. Eduardo can’t even remember the last time he saw Cameron and Divya without a stack of flash cards, quizzing each other before classes or at lunch. He knew they’d have a tasteful parting of the ways sometime after Cameron’s graduation, and Divya would probably have a new flash-card-carrying paramour by Homecoming. 

Which is why ’s really weird when Eduardo gets an email at the beginning of August from Divya about Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss’s eighteenth birthday party.

“Huh,” Eduardo says, frowning at his phone. 

“Hrgh?” Mark grunts, not looking up from where he’s trying to beat his own best time speedrunning _Ocarina of Time_. 

“Divya Narendra just emailed me to invite me to the twins’ birthday party.” 

“Mhmmm.” 

“Well that’s just, don’t you think that’s kind of weird?” 

Mark’s fingers are flying over the controller and when he hisses, “Hhhh, shut up,” Eduardo respects that and turns his attention to transposing a reply. Mark finishes while he’s still typing, putting the game on pause and tossing the controller down when he gets up off the enormous black pleather couch in the Zuckerberg’s basement and shuffles over to the mini-fridge. There’s the comforting familiar sound of the door opening, closing, and Mark opening a can of something, and then, “I don’t think it’s that weird.” 

“What?” 

“The email, I don’t think it’s that weird. They’re dating, right?” 

“Well, I knew they _were_ but I sort of figured, maybe they were done doing that by now. I mean, what are they waiting for?” 

Mark gives a one-sided shrug. “Might as well wait until the end of the summer, right? I mean who else is Cameron going to find willing to go along with playing second fiddle to Tyler on such short notice?”

“Fair,” Eduardo says, considering. There was something to be said about how easily Divya had slid into the seemingly non-existent space between the Winklevoss twins. He’d often wondered if Tyler’s lack of anything approaching a girlfriend had boiled down to the intimidating reality of navigating their hyper-intense twin dynamic. Or maybe that was just a reflection of the lack of time for having a dating life when you were a teen athletic prodigy. No wonder their birthday was always a massive blowout, it was the only day they were guaranteed off. 

Speaking of. 

“So do you still want me to give you a blowjob or what,” Mark says, taking one last sip of his mostly full can of Monster and setting it on the wooden side table. 

“You should really use a coaster,” Eduardo points out, but he doesn’t protest further when Mark goes for his belt. 

Eduardo is late to work on Wednesday night and it’s all Marie Kondo’s fault. 

Luckily for him however, Eduardo is not actually employed at his place of work, so no one really cares that he’s half an hour later than usual, though Dustin remarks upon it when he pulls up and parks beside the stark white cinderblock building that houses the drive-in theater’s projection booth, bathrooms, and concession stand. 

“Tsk, tsk, Mr. Saverin,” Dustin says, sprawled in one of the rental folding chairs they offer to people who don’t mind getting eaten alive while they watch their movie. “We were about thirty seconds away from calling out the search party.” 

“Touching,” Eduardo says, grabbing a chair for himself and flicking open the copy of Money Magazine he’d hastily tucked under his arm on his way out the door. 

“What happened? Did you run out of $170 pomade or something?”

“Ha fucking ha. This is the gratitude I get for telling you what hair products I use.” 

“Hey man, if I could literally wash money down the drain I certainly wouldn’t spend all my free time hanging out here,” Dustin says, getting up and folding his chair back against the wall. “I know you’re gaming the system but surely there’s better things to do than this.” 

“But where else can I get this word class entertainment,” Eduardo says, giving his best _Yeah I’m A Little Bitch But You Love Me_ grin over his Armani sunglasses. 

Dustin huffs, but fondly. “Alright, enjoy your scam. I gotta get the hopper going.” 

“There’s a reason they’re called scam _artists!_ ” Eduardo calls after him which earns him a delightful middle finger as Dustin pulls open the staff entrance to the building and disappears. 

For the record it wasn’t a scam exactly, it was just smart business sense. If Eduardo’s dad was willing to give him $10,000 at the end of the summer in exchange for ten weeks of minimum wage employment, it was a better trade-off to fake that he was working, donate the equivalent of eighteen hours at the drive-in on a biweekly basis to whatever charity his dad was gaga about in the moment, and pocket the difference at the end of the summer. 

Sure that meant he had to spend three nights a week watching the same blockbusters on a loop and killing time, but Mark worked projections, and once the movie was up and running he’d come hang in Eduardo’s SUV and it was basically the same thing as hanging out in the Zuckerberg’s basement. 

That was how this whole _thing_ had started. Mark complaining about the sex scene in some forgettable raunchy comedy. “There’s no way anyone enjoys sucking dick _that much_ ,” he’d argued, gesturing emphatically at the screen through Eduardo’s windshield. 

“What?” 

“That level of moaning. It just feels unrealistic.” 

Eduardo had been happy to offer a counterpoint. 

Anyways, it all worked out great, Eduardo got out of the house where his dad was always trying to rope him into sunrise yoga or his new obsession with the KonMari method, he got to hang out with his friends, and for an investment of approximately $2000 he’d walk away with a clean $8000.

Eduardo’s pretty sure the good people of Money Magazine would agree with him on the sound financial logic of this arrangement. 

Still, there _are_ downsides to this whole scheme, like when his ex-girlfriend comes giggling into the lobby with a group of her friends while Eduardo’s camped out charging his phone from the only outlet in the whole building that isn’t somewhere employees only. (He could ask Mark to take it into the projection room and charge it in there for him, but he already feels like he’s overstaying his welcome a bit so he doesn’t want to push it by asking for favours.) 

Technically he and Christy are on good terms. Technically. But he doesn’t draw any attention to himself as she snakes to the front of the line and immediately pushes her upper body onto the high counter, feet just skimming off the floor as she holds herself up with her arms. 

“ _Hel-lo_ ,” she sing-songs. “Can we get some _service_ puh-lease.” 

“Hold your horses, hold your horses,” Dustin says, down somewhere in the glass cabinet where they keep all the candy displayed, popping up like an over eager ginger-esque gopher. “Let me guess, large popcorn, extra butter and a sprite with _light_ ice and a bag of M&Ms.” 

“ _Peanut_ M&M’s,” Christy says, her feet hitting the ground with a satisfying little thud. “The service here is really going downhill, I don’t think in good conscience I can leave you a good Yelp review.”

“Do people still use Yelp?” Dustin asks, digging his shovel into the mountain of freshly popped popcorn. 

“Mr. Drive-In, probably checks it everyday. My dad’s like, obsessed with our rating,” Christy says, leaning on the counter, chin resting in the middle of her palm. Christy’s parents own a car dealership, a fact which landed her a great summer job and the nicest cars of anyone in their grade. “But hey! When you get fired you can totally come work for him and they you can see me eeeeeveryday.” 

Dustin laughs awkwardly, and Eduardo can’t see his face but he sort of doesn’t have to. He’s got the urge to make incredulous eye contact with someone, but Mark’s in the other room getting the movie set up, so he just licks across his teeth and keeps his eyes on his phone. He knows Dustin gets all awkward and goofy when he’s nervous, but he doesn’t think he can step in between his friend and his ex-girlfriend without creating some weird drama. 

As it is, nothing else weird happens as Dustin rings up Christy and her friends and he gives her a tentative head jerking nod as she makes her way out of the lobby, already in deep discussion about the relative hotness of various famous men named Chris. 

“I can talk to her for you,” Eduardo says when they’re gone. 

“Uh whu-hu-ut?” Dustin says, startled. 

“Christy. If she’s like, bothering you. I know she thinks she’s just being funny and cute but I can tell her to knock it off if you’re uncomfortable.” 

Dustin blinks, head tilting. “Why? Would I be uncomfortable?” 

“She said she was going to get you fired.” 

“Yeah but— ” Dustin waves a hand. “You know that’s _Christy_ , she’s just joking around. You know. That’s our rapport.” 

“Since when do you and Christy have a _rapport_?” 

“I mean, you know, we did stu-co stuff together,” Dustin says vaguely. 

Eduardo frowns, unconvinced, but if Dustin doesn’t want him to step in then he won’t. He’s still thinking about it ten minutes into the first movie, when Mark lets himself into the back passenger side door where Eduardo’s already set up in one of the middle row seats. He has his car radio set to the drive-in’s channel, but turned down so low it’s barely a murmur. He’s already seen this movie at least a dozen times, but last time they turned the radio off completely Mark almost missed running back to set up the next movie when they’d gotten a little preoccupied. 

“I heard you were late,” Mark says, a box of Junior Mints in hand. Not Eduardo’s favourite, but he’d learned pretty quickly if he stuck only to his favourites he got sick of them uncomfortably fast. Since that revelation he and Mark have been systematically moving their way through the candy bar selections. 

“My dad flew out to the cottage for a few days for some. Cleanse? Thing? There was yoga. Karla was there, I didn’t go.” 

“And by cottage you mean the 3.5 million dollar chalet in Breckenridge.” 

“I don’t know who talked to him or _what_ happened, but now my dad’s best friend is Marie Kondo and we’re Konmari-ing the whole house. Only we’re doing his version of Konmari where you drag everything out into the living room, my mom gets mad because she’s the one who picked out basically everything in the house, and they both get annoyed and get rid of essentially nothing.” 

“Damn you guys are really slow on this one, I thought rich people got all the hot new trends first.” 

“Yeah not this time.” 

“It’s that trickle up economics,” Mark says tipping the box of Junior Mints into his mouth and chewing thoughtfully. “I can send Teo some thinkpiece on why Konmari is _Bad Actually_ , being late to trends is actually great if you want the benefit of the twittersphere already having ripped it to pieces.” 

“Maybe,” Eduardo says, bristling a little. 

“Okay, suffer then,” Mark says, so flat and disinterested that it startles a laugh out of Eduardo, “Here. Eat the rest of these.” 

Eduardo accepts the box from Mark, pops a few in his mouth and then sticks the rest into the side pocket on the door. 

They don’t do anything for the entirety of the first movie, which isn’t weird of them but it does happen from time to time. Eduardo always feels like he’s trespassing over some invisible line of drive-in decorum when they do, that it’s an unspoken rule you’re only allowed to mess around during the second feature. 

Mark is always warmer than he expects, and somehow both bonier and heavier than he seems like he should be. 

“I don’t have bird bones Wardo,” he gripes, when Eduardo readjusts them, complaining that something was digging into his spleen. Eduardo’s not even entirely sure where his spleen is, but Mark rolls off and then rolls back into him, putting one of his hands up under Eduardo’s shirt. He brushes against Eduardo’s sternum with the back of his knuckles, like he’s trying to get an unfamiliar cat to trust him. He stops stroking after a little bit and Eduardo goes back to kissing him, but he keeps his hand curled there, under the thin fabric of Eduardo’s shirt. 

He keeps it there until he pulls back abruptly at one point to quote along to a piece of movie dialogue, the audio still running faintly over Eduardo’s car speakers. 

“That’s my favourite line,” Mark says, by way of explanation even though it’s not much of an explanation at all, and he resettles his hand with even less explanation against Eduardo’s neck. 

There’s something about how Mark kisses that reminds Eduardo of a court stenographer. The way he matches Eduardo’s rhythms perfectly, but never seems to dictate them himself. Though he’s the one who always seems to initiate the next steps, moving Eduardo’s hand or head where he wants them with these blunt little shoves that still come off as strangely coy. 

Eduardo comes with Mark’s hand tight around him and the stupid thought that maybe next time he should try giving Mark a blowjob through his favourite line. Try and distract him as a personal challenge. 

“We’re still going to the Winklevii’s party, right?” Mark asks after, wiping his hand off on the roll of paper towel Eduardo keeps in his backseat for precisely this reason. 

“Did you get an invite?” Eduardo says, surprised. 

Mark stares at him for a very long moment, like he’s said something incredibly strange. “You’re bringing me.” 

“Oh. Okay. Sure,” Eduardo says, hating how halting his voice sounds. 

“Is that a problem?” 

“No, no, it’s not a — I just didn’t really think you liked the twins very much, I guess.” 

He expects Mark to point out that the reason people go to high school parties is less to do with their feelings for the people throwing them, and more to do with the free booze and the morbid curiosity of what your peers get up to when they’re unsupervised. But instead he just tilts his head and says, “I voted for Tyler for student council president.” 

Eduardo doesn’t really have an argument for that, and Mark’s done with this conversation, pulling his hoodie out of the tangle of blankets Eduardo keeps in the backseat and tying it around his waist before popping the trunk and climbing out the back of Eduardo's car. 

Eduardo waits until he sees Mark let himself back into the projection room before he climbs out himself and closes the hatch. On screen things are exploding, the speaker audio of a hundred or more closed cars giving a strangely muffed soundtrack to the visuals. It’s a bit too much like being stoned for Eduardo’s tastes, and he gives himself a good shake before heading over to the lobby so he can get something to drink, the back of his throat bugging him in a way that feels totally unfair given the lack of blowjobs he’d given. 

There are two missed texts on his phone from his dad and Eduardo’s thumb hovers over opening them as he shoulders open the lobby door, not sure if he’s ready to deal with what is almost certainly either a college ranking article or some vaguely cultish fourteen-day retreat where you sit naked in a yurt and harness your inner guardian bullshit. Both of which are distracting enough that Eduardo’s already inside the lobby when he looks up and sees Christy Lee sitting on the concession stand counter, one of her legs wrapped around Dustin’s waist as she kisses him like she’s developing a new technique for tonsillectomy. 

“Whoa,” Eduardo says, somehow too startled to even be loud about it. 

“Wardo!” Dustin exclaims, clearly well equipt to make up for his lack of volume. He tries to take a half step back from Christy, who looks annoyed but not embarrassed as she wraps her other leg around Dustin to keep him where he is. 

“Sorry, I— sorry,” Eduardo says. 

“Did you need something?” Christy says, flexing her leg where it’s wrapped around Dustin’s waist. 

“I guess not,” Eduardo says with a shrug he hopes comes off as wry, but he doubts he pulls it off sufficiently. The door jangles behind him and he wishes that he had cigarettes because smoking one seems like the thing to do when you walk in on your friend and your ex-girlfriend making out. He wants to talk to Mark, but Mark’s off doing his actual job, so he just stands there halfway between the white brick building and his car, listening to the faint muted sounds of explosions and getting eaten by mosquitoes. 

Dustin comes outside after a few minutes. “Hey Eduardo,” he says, “I uhhhhh, don’t know what to say man.” He starts laughing nervously like _ah-ha ah-ha ah-ha,_ like he’s waiting for Eduardo to pick up his cue. 

Eduardo swallows and says “Yeah, it’s okay man. I was just...y’know.” 

“I broke the bro code,” Dustin says miserably. “I promise I was going to tell you, I _swear_ I was.” 

It takes Eduardo a moment to parse that, because up until that moment he had never considered that this might be something that had _been happening_ and not just a concession stand induced moment of passion. Despite having just seen them kissing, he just couldn’t conceptualize Dustin and Christy together, like two magnets trying to repel each other. 

“Wait, sorry, run that by me again. Are you— are you two dating?” 

Even in the low light Edaurdo can see the flush that starts creeping over Dustin’s cheeks. “We haven’t really like _talked_ about it but, um.”

“So, yes,” Eduardo says, impatiently. 

“Kinda?” Dustin says, voice reaching up to an octave so high it crackles embarrassingly, cutting through Eduardo’s annoyance like a hot knife through butter. 

“Alright,” he says, rubbing his temple. “No that’s. It’s cool man, we’re cool.” 

“Whew, okay,” Dustin says, wiping imaginary sweat from his brow. That was something Eduardo had always liked about Dustin, the unselfconscious way he often acted more like a cartoon character or a muppet than a person. He thought it was probably at least a little bit calculated some of the time, but it was never disingenuous. 

Eduardo claps him on the shoulder and exhales heavily. “I’m gonna go get back in my car before I get mosquito-induced anemia.” 

“You got it Pontiac,” Dustin chirps, and then more solemnly, “I am sorry though, for keeping it from you. That wasn’t cool.” 

“No it wasn’t,” Eduardo says magnanimously, “But I forgive you.” 

He’s such a good friend. Which is why he accepts Dustin’s hug even though he’s a little sweaty and smells like a highly dubious mix of buttered popcorn and Our Moment by One Direction. He sniffles when he presses his face into Eduardo’s shoulder. 

Christy is going to eat him alive. 

The text from Eduardo’s dad wasn’t about nude cleanses or college applications, it was about going to Pembroke to visit his oldest brother and his wife and their new baby, who isn’t actually that new anymore. She is very cute though, and Eduardo spends a lot of time holding her on his hip and chatting with his sister-in-law Marina while she does rich person chores, like organizing her stationary desk or arranging flowers. He likes Marina a lot, enough that it almost makes up for the fact that he’s now the uncle to a human person named Paisley.

“Are you still seeing that girl?” Marina asks in English after dinner when they’re relaxing on the patio while Julian and Lucas and his dad are all arguing about estate planning in Portugeuse. “Christina?” 

“Christy,” Eduardo corrects, and then feels stupid for bothering, “No, we broke up a while back.” 

Marina makes a sympathetic little cooing noise and asks him if he wants some wine. And then later on, when his dad and Julian are arguing about the best way to start a fire in the firepit, Lucas says, “Hey Ed, what’s your love life looking like these days?” 

“Oh you know, just batting them off with a stick,” Eduardo says, landing it a little better after being given the chance for a warmup. 

“Good man,” Lucas says. 

“Actually, my ex just started seeing someone else.” Which felt embarrassing enough without adding in that it was one of his friends. 

“Just wait,” Lucas slaps him on the knee, once a lax bro always a lax bro, “She’ll be crawling back soon enough.” 

“Nah, that’s okay, it wasn’t really working out,” he says. 

“Well don’t worry, you’re still young, you’ve got lots of time,” Lucas says with all the sage wisdom of a 25-year-old divorcee, and gets up to get another beer. 

The next morning Ari drives down, which should be a relief because Ari is Eduardo’s favourite brother. He might feel guilty about this if the reasons he’s Eduardo’s favourite weren’t so objectively understandable, and as it were he figures Julian and Lucas probably know Ari is his favourite. They’re closest in age and Ari’s mom, Karla, is still on speaking terms with his dad, a fact Eduardo has always attributed to the fact that they were never married. He’s never even met Lucas and Julian’s mom before, though he’s seen pictures of her on various vision board-type projects his dad has embarked on over the years. 

Anyway, the reason it’s not a relief when Ari arrives is that his dad always gets a little bit out of hand when all four of them are together, because it almost never happens. This time it involves dragging them all out to a spa where Eduardo fakes a claustrophobia-induced panic attack to get out of doing the sensory deprivation tank. If he wanted to lie there for an hour and let his mind entertain itself he’d just drop acid. 

_Hey can you call me in like an hour and say I need to cover your shift tonight_ , he texts Mark from the change room, wrapped in a bathrobe with the spa’s name embroidered over the heart. 

_having that much fun?_ Mark texts back after ten minutes. Eduardo has relocated to the bathroom after Lucas and Julian came into the locker room having the same argument about prenuptial agreements they’ve been having for four years. 

_Maybe more like half an hour. Make it sound really bad._

He doesn’t get another text from Mark, and Eduardo’s starting to worry he’s actually going to have to walk across hot coals when his phone rings. 

“Ahh,” he says, trying really hard to sound appropriately chagrined, “Pai, sorry, this is my co-worker, I should probably take this.” 

Lucas and Julian exchange a series of glances Eduardo interprets as skeptical, but maybe he’s just being paranoid. 

“Hey,” Mark says, in a serious tone of voice, “this is me busting your ass out.” 

“Hi Mark,” Eduardo says, aiming for politely annoyed, “I’m with my family right now, I can’t really talk. What’s going on?” 

“Give the phone to your dad.” 

“What?” Eduardo says, not even needing to fake his dismay. 

“He likes me, let me talk to him,” Mark insists. 

“I—” Eduardo says, scrambling to find a way to say _No way in hell what is wrong with you_ that will sound like the other half of an emergency work call-in. 

“Wardo,” Mark says, voice serious and stubborn. Christ he’s not going to win this one. “Put him on.” 

Eduardo bites the inside of his mouth, hard, and then holds the phone out, “Pai he wants to talk to you. It’s Mark.” He wants to drop it on the hard tiled ground between them, but he doesn’t. Ari quirks his eyebrows at him, _what’s that about?_ Eduardo gives a one shouldered shrug, _no clue._

He tries to listen to his dad, _mhmm_ -ing and _I see_ -ing into the phone with the correct balance of interest and indifference, but he can’t help the way his head snaps instinctively when his dad says, “Well Eduardo is actually in Florida, we— yes that’s right, to see Juliano and the baby.” 

Eduardo’s honestly starting to wish he’d just sucked it up and walked across hot coals. At least it would be over faster than this phone call his dad is having with Mark. 

“I will sort this,” his dad says finally, voice very serious. “Yes, yes— Alright. Speak soon.” 

“Everything okay?” Lucas asks, hands shoved in the pocket of his robe. There’s a smear of something complimentary on the lapel, bright red against the bleach bright white. 

“Edu, you need to fly home,” his dad says, holding his phone back out to him. 

“I’m— what?” Eduardo says. 

His dad claps a hand on his shoulder, “I know you’re disappointed, but your colleague needs you and sometimes work obligations come before family commitments. I promise we will do this coal walk another time.” 

“Oh goodie,” Lucas says, under his breath enough that no one acknowledges it. 

“Now let's get you to the airport,” his dad says, using his leverage to steer Eduardo towards the tasteful row of sleek minimalist lockers where he’d folded up his clothes, though he’d refused to leave his watch, phone, or sunglasses because in his experience the rich kleptomaniac trope was well founded. 

_You’re such a little shit,_ Ari mouths at him, and then, aloud, says, “Pai, I can drive him to the airport.” 

There’s one upside to Mark’s plan at least, it’s not a lie when Eduardo shrugs and says, “I have no idea what Mark said to make this happen,” when Ari starts grilling him. 

“I mean, I’m sure a heavy dose of youngest son favouritism probably helped.” 

“Come switch with me and live under dad’s roof for a week and we’ll see who has it so easy,” Eduardo shoots back, annoyed. “Now that you guys are all off being adults I’m under the microscope all the time.” 

It was true that ever since Ari had been safely delivered to the crunchy granola campus of Colorado College his dad hadn’t really needed to worry much about the three eldest Saverin boys. Julian was nestled into family business, Lucas was married and then promptly and cleanly divorced thanks to an iron-clad prenup, and Ari was off playing hacky sack and testing the boundaries of how many tattoos he could acquire before dad wrote him out of his will. 

Eduardo was the one stuck at home and at the mercy of whatever their father’s whim of the week was. 

Ari pouts at him mockingly, “Poor Edu.” 

“I’m just saying,” Eduardo grumbles. “Don’t get all middle-child-chip-on-your-shoulder about it.” 

“Alright, alright.” 

“Asshole.” 

“Douchecanoe.” 

They drive in annoyed silence to the drop-off for domestic flights, but Ari still leans over the gearshift to give him a tight hug before he goes. He gets stuck in Business Plus because of the last minute ticket booking, which feels like a sliver of penance for lying by proxy through Mark. 

The other penance is that he has to spend his whole evening at the drive-in because he’s allegedly covering Mark’s shift, and having facilitated his blessing, Christy and Dustin are in full-on couple mode, which is just as exhausting as one could imagine. It’s almost enough to make him upchuck the dragon rolls he’d hastily eaten in his car when he walks into the lobby and Christy is throwing Reese’s Pieces for Dustin to catch in his mouth. 

“You have to lean into it more,” Christy is saying, lining up her shot like a champion dart player. 

“Yeah I’m trying to go for like, a pelican technique,” Dustin says very seriously, and then lunges forward when she throws, the two of them _ooh!_ -ing excitedly when he snags it mid-air. 

“You’re like a Reese’s Pieces throwing prodigy! I think you could go varsity.” 

“All in the wrist,” Christy agrees, laughing as she leans up on her toes to kiss him. 

Eduardo averts his eyes and tries not to get all petty about the fact that he can’t remember Christy ever wanting to joke around with him like that. He hadn’t been dating her because he thought it was true love, but it still stung a little to watch her being sweet with Dustin in a way she’d never really been sweet with him. 

Whatever. It was fine. 

“Oh, hey Wardo,” Dustin says, finally taking notice of him, still sitting on the countertop. He doesn’t look remotely sheepish or embarrassed, which Eduardo finds a little annoying on principle. 

“Yeah hey Wardo,” Christy echoes, leaning her forearms on Dustin’s thighs. 

“I thought you were in Florida this week.” 

Eduardo shrugs. “Change of plans. Is Mark in the projection room?” 

“Nah man, Mark’s not working tonight,” Dustin says. 

“What?” 

“Yeah I guess he had a family thing? Billy Olson’s on deck.” 

“Oh,” Eduardo says, trying to smooth down his surprise into something a little self-deprecating. “Must have gotten the schedule mixed up. Looks like I’m not going to be getting employee of the month.” 

“Hey, don’t come for my crown,” Dustin says, pointing a warning finger. 

“Please, if anyone’s getting employee of the month it’s Chris.” 

“Wardo,” Dustin says. “Please tell me you know Chris doesn’t work here anymore because he has an internship in DC.” 

“Yeah, that was the joke,” Eduardo says, even though he’d actually forgotten until this moment that Chris was in DC. But Chris worked in the ticket booth last summer anyways, so Eduardo barely saw him. It was a totally reasonable thing to not know. 

Just like it was totally reasonable that he didn’t know about Mark’s thing with his family. 

Whatever. He’s pretty sure most of his friends couldn’t even name his brothers in order, and he doesn’t expect them to. Friendship doesn’t mean keeping tabs on everything all the time, and everyone knows the kid who actually remembers everyone’s birthdays and makes a big deal about it is just looking for cheap attention. Eduardo doesn’t need a tray of cupcakes to win over anyone. 

Still, back in his car, the radio tuned into the movie on low — just out of habit — he can’t shake the feeling he’s just failed a pop quiz everyone else got to study for. 

The thing about upending your life and starting over at a new high school for sophomore year was that despite Eduardo’s best efforts to avoid it, these things tended to have a ripple effect well past the New Kid stage. 

It was the whole reason he’d ended up lumped with Mark&Dustin&Chris after he’d been forced to attend freshman orientation, nevermind that he’d already had an entire year of high school under his belt. Mark had clearly found the ordeal just as patronizing as Eduardo did, which had led to Mark dragging him along with his friends. In the long run it had all definitely worked out, though it was hard not to get a little salty sometimes about the way he got left out of things because his friends were all a year younger or because people had forgotten he was new once upon a time and never bothered to fill him in. 

All this to say that Eduardo’s always been vaguely aware that the Winklevoss twins had brothers, but he’s really not prepared to walk into the foyer of their house and have five golden All-American boys grinning down at him with perfect white All-American smiles from a crisp, professionally taken family photo. 

“My god,” Eduardo says. 

“Yeah it’s a _lot_ ,” Mark says, throwing his hoodie haphazardly over the bannister where a dozen other people have had the same idea. It slides off and lands on the floor dejectedly, and Mark strides off into the party. Eduardo debates hanging it up for a second before following. 

Normally he wouldn’t enter a party and immediately track down the hosts, absolutely content to mix and mingle until they crossed paths organically. But the twins are going to Harvard and since it’s at the top of his shortlist he’d bothered to get them a gift, even if this wasn’t really the kind of birthday party where anyone outside of the inner circle would bother with one. He feels a bit stupid actually, a gift bag slung over his wrist as he combs his way through the party, but he could suck it up if it means staying in the best possible graces of two soon-to-be Harvard students. 

It’s Mark who finds them first, tucked against the wall of the pool house with Divya. 

“Hey!” Mark calls, waving an arm over his head, which is not the subtle approach that Eduardo would have aimed for, but Tyler grins and waves back at them. Mark nods at them in turn with a solemnity so serious it borders on comical. “Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, Mr. Second Gentleman.” 

“Is that what that’s called?” Cameron says, but doesn’t get an answer before Tyler energetically cuts in. 

“Hey! Look who made it,” he says, passing his beer to Cameron and offering both Mark and Eduardo one of those hand-clasp-and-shoulder-bump greetings. He’s clearly softening the shoulder bump, but the bones in Eduardo’s hands get closer together than he thinks is likely advisable when he grasps his hand.

“Happy birthday,” Eduardo says, holding up the gift bag with a calculated amount of earnestness, though the slight embarrassment is all his own. “It’s vintage,” he offers when Tyler tears into tissue paper and comes up with the Harvard Crew mug that Eduardo had stumbled upon on eBay after an embarrassingly long time of tracking secondhand resellers. 

“Sick,” Tyler says, with the lack of self-consciousness anyone who unironically uses the word sick needs to possess. 

“I wish I could have found two but…” 

“Well don’t worry, there’s _nothing_ twins love more than sharing,” Cameron says, flirting with snide. He seems a little drunk, over enunciating his words like he’s ordering at a drive thru window. 

“You just happened upon this piece of Crimson memorabilia in your day-to-day, did you?” Divya asks, taking Tyler’s beer out of Cameron’s hand and handing it back to him. 

“Well, I might have some ulterior motives for keeping an eye on those sorts of things,” Eduardo admits, spreading his hands like _hey can you blame me_. 

“Mhmm,” Divya says, plastering himself against Cameron’s side now that his hands were free, “Well, hey, good luck for the lottery then, man. I hope your incentive is as good as mine.” 

It’s arguably the most coupley thing he’s ever seen Divya Narendra do, which is why it’s somehow both unsettling and completely expected when Cameron goes, “Ugh, Div, it’s ninety degrees, can you not drape yourself all over me please?” 

“Alright,” Divya says in that tense _Lets Make Nice_ voice you hear people use in restaurants who are definitely going to fight in their cars later. 

“C’mon gents,” Tyler says, every inch the fun-but-still-responsible guy who won student council president 3:1 and still managed to score a date to Winter Formal with his opponent, “Mark, Eduardo, you feeling up to some beer pong? Cam? You wanna pong?” 

“Yeah, I could be down,” Cameron shrugs, pushing off the wall of the pool house and towards the tables where a package of red solo cups are sitting still pristine in their plastic packaging. 

“What, am I supposed to cheerlead?” Divya gripes.

“Go mingle,” Cameron says, waving a hand at the smatterings of people spread across the backyard and into the first floor of their house. “You made the guest list, aren’t there people you want to say hi to?” 

Divya’s mouth tightens and his eyes widen, but he doesn’t argue back with his boyfriend, just puffs up his cheeks and blows out his breath with an annoyed trill before turning on his heel. 

Looks like the Cameron-and-Divya bubble is about to pop. 

“Sorry about that,” Tyler says, when Cameron’s run off to retrieve beer, “they’re both just kind of freaked about, you know, The Future.” 

“The Future,” Mark repeats flatly. 

Tyler shrugs, “Y’know, I think Cam just wants things to feel normal tonight. And not like a last hurrah.” 

_That_ startles Eduardo a little bit, the undercurrent of implication that maybe the Cameron-and-Divya bubble had already popped. And really, what would be more on brand than for them to spend the twin’s birthday party keeping up appearances even if they’d already broken up? Nothing Eduardo can think of. 

It’s decidedly unkind, but Eduardo catches Mark’s eye and purses his lips knowingly. And hey, he can applaud them for having made it this far past graduation in the first place. Mark mouths _what?_ back, but there’s no easy way to explain with Tyler standing there, so he just waves dismissively and gets to work setting up cups. 

They end up playing half-and-half beer and water — “Honestly it’s more about the carbs than the alcohol content” — so Eduardo’s barely buzzed despite the number of shots Mark and Tyler have managed to sink on them. He had, stupidly, assumed that splitting up the twins was the right move for victory, but apparently not. 

“Faster Winklevoss! Kill! Kill!” Mark chants as Tyler tries to frantically make the last shot. 

“My MAN!” Tyler says, laughing appreciatively and holding up his hand for a high five, which makes Eduardo think this must be a reference to something. He expects Mark to roll his eyes, but he just grins and ducks his chin bashfully before reaching up to slap Tyler’s palm. 

“I have no idea what’s happening either,” Cameron offers sympathetically, which makes Eduardo feel absolutely pathetic.

“Well uh, good game and happy birthday. I think we should probably go say hi, make the rounds.” He turns to gesture for Mark but he’s got a look of intense concentration on his face and is nodding very seriously at Tyler who’s got his hands on the back of his head and is talking very, very quickly. It doesn’t seem worth it to get between the two of them so Eduardo just presses his mouth together tightly, nods curtly at Cameron, and strides off into the party. 

An hour later Eduardo is on a sweltering leather couch crammed between his ex-girlfriend and Chris, three beers deep, and trying to follow along to a story the latter is telling him while he suffers through the worst heartburn he’s ever experienced in his entire life. 

“Yeah, mhmm,” Eduardo agrees, not listening. He hasn’t seen Mark since he left him chatting with Tyler Winklevoss, and he feels weirdly uneasy about it. There’s something about Mark, like his object permanence for Eduardo is a little bit less than anyone else’s, and whenever he’s not around it feels like he could hypothetically be getting up to anything. And this feeling had only increased since the phone incident with Eduardo’s dad. 

When he’d pressed Mark about it he’d just shrugged and said, “I just told him I had a family thing and that I needed to trade shifts with you.” 

Eduardo had been skeptical of that, but Mark hadn’t offered any other explanation and instead turned in his desk chair and started pushing Eduardo back towards his bed in insistent little jabs, his sock feet shuffling against the floor. Mark liked to code with an audiobook in the background, usually Lord of the Rings because the tapes were long and he’d listened to them enough times they didn’t distract him. 

Eduardo however, was not immune to the melodic narration of a man with a British accent, and found it actively distracting as he was trying to focus on kissing Mark’s neck without leaving any visible signs. He had learned the hard way that Mark bruised from practically an overly loud noise, and he was trying not to repeat that embarrassing blunder. 

“Can we turn that off?” he’d said, letting Mark roll them over so he was on top. 

“This isn’t doing it for you Wardo?” Mark had said, mouth curved like a tilde, sweeping his hands up the sides of Eduardo’s torso lightly. 

Eduardo had shivered, and when he’d reached down to palm Mark through his shorts, Mark had caught his hand and said, “Lets just keep doing this,” and then kissed Eduardo with such sound determination that he forgot about the audiobook entirely. 

So, anyway, the point was that Eduardo isn’t always the best judge of what’s going on in Mark’s mind, even if he’s a fair bit better than most. And he can’t help but get a little more antsy about it when Mark’s not in his eyeline. 

To his left Dustin starts snorting and Eduardo finally tunes in to what Chris is saying, finishing off the last lukewarm dregs of a beer, even if that’s not going to help his heartburn in the slightest. 

“—And that’s when President Obama himself called me into his office and said, ‘Mr. Hughes, for your bravery in the Mars Attack we are awarding you the Nobel peace prize,’ and then Elton John and the Backstreet Boys made me gay ambassador to the Mall of America.” 

“What?” Eduardo says and then Dustin starts cracking up in earnest, “Fuck off.”

“Dude, where did you _go!?_ ” Dustin says, clapping his hands together delightedly. 

“I’m gone for four whole weeks and this is the warm welcome I’m repaid with,” Chris says, shaking his head.

“Yeah he’s the gay ambassador to the Mall of America, show the man some respect,” Christy says, clearly thrilled to join in. 

Chris toasts her with his Smirnoff Ice, and Eduardo climbs to his feet, regretting his decision to wear shorts when he definitely tears off the top layer of skin as he unsticks from leather. “Alright comedians, don’t start an improv group.” 

“Yes, and?” Christy says sweetly, and then Dustin and Chris are cracking up again. 

He tries to find Mark for ten minutes, and then gives up and goes to look for antacids. 

Which is why, of course, after checking the basement and downstairs bathrooms, he nearly slams into Mark coming out of a door helpfully labelled ‘Bathroom’ on the second floor. (The only other door that had any sort of sign on it was one that said THIS IS OUR THIRTEEN YEAR OLD BROTHER’S ROOM!! STAY OUT FREAKS!!, presumably to dissuade said freaks who might otherwise hook up in a middle schooler’s room.) 

“Hey,” Mark says, he’s more drunk than he’d been when Eduardo left him, but he still seems pretty clear eyed. He’s put his hoodie back on, unzipped over his t-shirt, and the bottom is damp from where he presumably dried his hands off. “You good?”

“I’ve got heartburn like a _mother_ ,” Eduardo says. “Did that seem like the kind of bathroom that they keep medicine cabinet stuff in?” 

“Not really.” 

“Jesus,” Eduardo says, and he checks the under-the-sink cabinet just in case, but Mark was right, it’s empty, save for stacks of toilet paper and boxes of tissues. 

“The twins have a jack and jill bathroom between their rooms,” Mark offers. “I bet they’d have shit.” The question must be all over Eduardo’s face because Mark gives a shrug and says, “I helped Tyler do that superlative website for the Seniors, remember?” 

“Sure,” Eduardo lies. “Where, uh—?” 

It feels weird to be following after Mark, but he leads him further down the hall and gestures at an otherwise unmarked door. 

“I feel like this is probably off limits.” 

“Oh yeah, definitely,” Mark says. “Just be quick. Who’s gonna know?” 

“Right,” Eduardo agrees, and tries the knob, which sticks a little bit but isn’t locked. “You wanna stand guard?” 

“What and make a bird call? I’m not about to get yelled at. Just get your shit and get out. And come find me after,” Mark says, already turning back down the hall. 

Tyler’s room screams suburban rich kid in a way that makes the back of Eduardo’s neck itch, and he feels the bizarre need to avert his eyes from the light box letters that spell T-Y-L-E-R over his bed, or the artfully framed movie posters and colour coordinated bookshelf. He moves briskly for the bathroom door the way you might speed walk past an old acquaintance you weren’t in the mood to socialize with, and fumbles around uselessly for a few minutes before he finds the light switch. 

It’s a surprisingly spacious bathroom with a sliding pocket door that separates the toilet from the rest of the room like a European water closet, and he starts rummaging through drawers and cabinets. There’s an open box of condoms in a drawer that clearly belongs to Cameron, half tucked behind a first aid kit, and Eduardo shuts that drawer with a loud thud in his haste. 

In the second to last drawer he finally finds a package of unopened Tums and spends an embarrassing few minutes picking at the safety seal and realizing he definitely needs to put in some more time at the gym if his thighs are protesting this much against a gentle squat. He pops two and shoves the bottle back more or less where he found it. 

He’s still chewing when he hears Cameron’s bedroom door open and in a split-second irrational moment of adrenaline at the thought of getting caught having literally just riffled through all the cabinets and drawers of his party hosts, Eduardo’s body goes on full hide-and-seek autopilot and he finds himself back on his feet and pulling back the shower curtain.

Of course as soon as he’s standing in the shower with the curtain drawn back he realizes that in the time it took he almost certainly could have darted back into Tyler’s room. Now he’s stuck like some kind of pulp horror serial killer beside Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss’s shockingly drug store selections of shampoo and body wash.

He hasn’t even had a chance to wonder whether or not it’s Cameron or someone else when he hears Divya mutter, “C’mon killer, get it together. It’s fine. Smarten up.” 

Oh dear lord. 

Eduardo braces for positive affirmations but there’s just the sound of a cupboard door being opened and some rummaging followed by the distinctive sound of a glasses case opening and shutting. Eduardo ducks a tactful glance through the slit of the curtain and is rewarded with the sight of Divya sticking his finger in his eye to fish out his contact in the reflection of the mirror. 

He tries to even out his breathing as low and slow as possible. Crisis averted, even if he’s stuck in a shower with the faucet leaking ever so slightly on his shoe and feeling stupid. As soon as Divya’s done taking his contacts out he can slip out of here as easily as he slipped in, track down Mark and actually get to _enjoy_ this party instead of making connections and making nice with Dustin and Christy to show how _totally cool he was about this no forreal guys_. 

Which. Alright, he _is_ mostly cool with it, he likes Christy well enough, obviously, she’s incredibly smart, obviously gorgeous, and they seemed to have a similar understanding of the kind of mutual exploitation that was the backbone of any successful high school relationship. Or at least that’s what Eduardo thought, until one off-handed comment about them eventually parting ways after graduation had led to a glass centrepiece filled with water and lit candles being knocked across the table at Spring Formal. 

Eduardo’s still thinking about paper napkins catching fire before immediately being extinguished when he realizes that he can’t hear Divya moving around anymore, and the hair on the back of his neck stands on end. He has a fleeting horrible impulse that Divya is about to rip the shower curtain back and expose him, the same way his mind would flash to the idea of someone following him up the stairs at night when he was climbing back to his room in the dark. Irrational and yet impossible to ignore. 

A small whining noise snaps him out of it, and yes, that’s much closer to the sink, he’s fine. He’s safe. There’s another noise then, a sound like choking, once, twice, three times, sharp and painful before cresting like a wave and suddenly Divya is crying. 

Divya Narendra is _crying_. 

It’s not a nice thing to admit, but his first thought is a sharp jolt of smug vindication. He _knew_ they were going to break up. He _knew_ Cameron had been acting strangely. He _told_ Mark this was going to happen. 

But then Divya starts to actually sob, muffled into his elbow or maybe his sleeve, and the victory of getting to tell Mark any of this feels more like toasting to other people’s miseries than an ode to his sharp sense of perception. 

Jesus is he like, actually a terrible person? Should he try and — he doesn’t even know — help? Somehow? Is there a version of this where he puts his arm around Divya and says _there, there_ and they walk together into the Senior Hall in September with a new sense of camaraderie? 

Well he’ll never know, because while considering this Eduardo takes an unconscious half step backwards into the shower shelf and sends half a dozen bottles of Old Spice body wash and 2-in-1 Shampoo and Conditioner tumbling down and echoing through the bathroom. 

“Jesus- _fuck!_ ” Divya yelps, like a dog whose tail got stepped on, piercing and sharp. 

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Eduardo says, pulling back the shower curtain, “I’m so sorry it’s just me, I’m not a serial killer.” 

It is not his best line. 

“What in the _fuck_ ,” Divya says, crouched down tightly in front of the cabinet under the sink. He’s wearing his glasses now, dark blue and very rectangular, which don’t really flatter his face shape, clutching at his hairline. 

“I’m sorry— I— Mark said— I tried the other bathrooms but— I get really bad heartburn,” Eduardo tries, almost grateful at how his failure to string a sentence together protects the patheticness of his explanation by being even more pitiful. “Are you okay?”

“Oh yeah I’m peachy fucking keen,” Divya says, hand still pressed tight to his temple, “Yeah I’m having the time of my fucking life. My boyfriend and my best friend are leaving for Cambridge on Tuesday and I’m having a mental breakdown over a bottle of contact solution because is it even worth _keeping that here anymore_ when Cam isn’t even going to _live here_ in a week when suddenly some _asshole_ is emerging from the shower like goddamn _Psycho_ or some shit and I’m giving myself a concussion on the fucking cabinet. Yeah I’m _great_ Eduardo.” 

He shoves the aforementioned bottle of contact solution back under the sink and climbs heavily to his feet, clutching at the sink and wiping at his face with the back of his free hand. 

“I am really sorry,” Eduardo offers weakly. 

“It’s fine,” Divya says unconvincingly, but then softens a little. “I mean, only like twenty percent of that is your fault.”

“That sucks,” Eduardo tries, deflecting away from that twenty percent. “About you and Cam.” 

“I mean I knew it was coming,” he leans against the counter and starts investigating his temple in the mirror, “the perils of dating up a grade.” 

“Still.” 

“Yeah,” Divya says, and winces when he presses too hard on the lump that’s already starting to form. “I mean my parents did long distance in the 90s when my mom had to move back to Hong Kong for a year, so. It feels a little lame in comparison but the twins are _so_ fucking _busy_ , like it’s already hard to carve out time with them. At least if we were on different continents with a thirteen hour time difference the bar would be low.” 

Divya starts getting a little choked up again, with a kind of gruff annoyance, like he’s telling off a younger sibling for acting out. Eduardo however, is just confused. 

“Wait you were talking about— You and Cameron are going to try the long distance thing?” 

Divya swivels away from the counter, arms crossing defensively, “Yeeaaahh...what were _you_ talking about?” 

“Oh, just, you guys seemed a bit off earlier,” Eduardo deflects, poorly, picking a piece of lint off of a blue hand towel. “Someone should probably look at your head, don’t you think? That seems pretty bad, do you think you could actually be concussed?” 

“I doubt it, but I mean, _maybe,_ ” Divya says. “Either way I should probably ice it.” 

“Yeah, I definitely would,” Eduardo agrees with a completely unearned conviction, and follows after Divya as they cross out of the bathroom through Cameron’s room — the theme of which just seems to be the colour blue — and back out into the hall. 

“So wait,” Divya says, as they’re making their way leisurely down the stairs, “explain to me again what you were doing in the shower?” 

“I uh, I get heartburn really bad when I drink beer,” Eduardo offers lamely, better to start with his lesser shame, “But I didn’t think the twins would appreciate me rummaging around in their cabinets so hiding in the shower felt like the option that would get my ass kicked the least.” 

He glosses over Mark’s involvement because, well, it’s easy enough to leave him out of it, and frankly it’s not like it makes _him_ look any better. 

“Please,” Divya snorts, “Cameron loves playing host, he would have been over the moon to personally hand-deliver you remedies.” 

“Sounds likely from the guy who snipped at me when I was giving him a _gift_.” It’s not the kind of thing Eduardo normally verbalizes, but if he can’t be a little more blunt when he’s drunk then what was the point of giving himself heartburn?

“Oh don’t take that personally, he’s in a pissy mood because he refuses to acknowledge he has human feelings about going through an impending life change. Plus, focusing on other people is a _great_ way to ignore your own needs.” Divya says this pointedly, and Eduardo isn’t sure if it’s partially directed at him and not just Cameron. 

Probably _not_ , since this was the longest conversation he’d ever had with Divya, aside from one time in sophomore year when they’d been assigned presentation partners in civics. And that was only because they both had their wisdom teeth out the same week and just did their parts from home and met up the day of to go over details. Eduardo remembers that Divya was still a little swollen and had to take the lid off of his iced coffee to drink it because he wasn’t allowed to use a straw yet. 

They got a 96% on that project.

“Just trust me that he would have been all over it,” Divya continues. “Like, I don’t think my burning my hand on a sparkler last Fourth of July and Cameron asking me out the next day was a coincidence.” 

“Mhmm,” Eduardo agrees, and then runs back what Divya just said, his brain snagging on the date. “Wait, sorry, the Fourth of July like. Last summer?” 

“That is typically when it’s celebrated,” Divya says, cool as ice as he maneuvers around knots of flirting teens and into the kitchen, before lowering his voice and adding. “We didn’t wanna make a whole _thing_ of it. I was ready first, he wasn’t, I respected that. But then after Cam’s article and Homecoming we just...let people come to their own conclusions.” 

The article in question had been a short blurb on Cameron’s (then) recently appointed crew team captaincy, the kind of filler interview to round out their school’s attempt at a sports section for the school paper. Only this one had contained the decidedly not-filler revelation that Cameron Winklevoss was gay. Eduardo didn’t read the paper habitually, even though he told Chris he did, but he hadn’t needed to in this instance, Mark shoving the interview at him across the cafeteria table where it had been ripped out of the section. 

Eduardo remembers he had felt a little annoyed about it if he was being perfectly honest, he knew better than anyone that who you were attracted to was not a greatness to be achieved but one to be thrust upon you. Still, there was something kind of cinematic about it that Eduardo couldn’t deny was appealing, the rich and glossy athlete who would be indulged in this slight side step of WASP norms as a reward for what a credit he was in the other areas of his life. 

He’d still managed fucking Prom King for godsake. A photo of him in his gleaming plastic crown with his acceptably ambitious high school boyfriend tucked on his arm stuck on the stainless steel freezer door which was swung open as Divya rummaged around for an ice pack. 

Only, they’d been dating for four months longer than anyone had realized and they were actually planning on _trying_ the whole long distance college thing. And even if the possibility it would all flame out like so many high school couples did, that didn’t change the fact that they clearly considered themselves up to the challenge. 

And to be frank it was weirding Eduardo the fuck out. 

It’s a feeling that does not dissipate as Cameron comes through the sliding glass door and into the kitchen with a square slice of cake balanced on a paper plate, his grin going from expectant to confused as he eyes Divya digging around in the freezer. He meets Eduardo’s eye and he gives an open palm gesture that he hopes communicates, _I’m not involved, I am merely a witness._

“Uh, what’s up?” Cameron draws out slowly. 

“Ice pack?” Divya says, “I slammed my head on your bathroom cabinet.” 

“What? _How_?” Cameron says, abandoning the paper plate onto the kitchen island. 

“How did I hit my head on the cabinet? Well you see it was very simple, I hit it, on the cabinet.” He doesn’t seem particularly interested in throwing Eduardo under the bus, which he appreciates, because he’s not sure ‘well sure I was hiding in your shower but Divya was crying’ is going to work with Cameron as an ideal nuclear deterrent. 

Especially with the way his face goes all soft and concerned, reaching for a kitchen towel off of the oven door as Divya finally manages to come up with an ice pack. 

“Here, here,” Cameron says, taking the ice pack as Divya hoists himself up onto the island. “Yeah, ow, you’ve got a huge lump there. You feeling nauseous? Dizzy?” 

“No, I don’t have any concussion symptoms, thank you Doctor Winklevoss,” Divya says, pressing the ice pack to his temple. “Hey, next summer why don’t _you_ get injured at a party. Just to keep things fresh.” 

“Sounds fair,” Cameron agrees, and Eduardo is becoming increasingly aware that his presence is really unnecessary. “Tyler got impatient on cake, but I saved you a corner piece because I know you have your high frosting-to-cake ratio preference.” 

He leans over and slides the paper plate towards himself with his unsettlingly long arm until he can get a hand under it. Divya takes it and then looks between the plastic fork on the plate and Cameron, his other hand still holding the ice pack. “Uh? Little help?” 

Eduardo’s still trying to coordinate his best exit strategy out of the kitchen, and for a terrible second he thinks that the universe is going to try and teach him a horrible lesson by having Cameron start feeding Divya birthday cake. Like a caricature of obnoxious love and devotion. 

But instead Cameron takes the ice pack for Divya and holds it to his temple for him so he can eat, and there’s something so genuinely unselfish about it that it knocks the air right out of him. 

He’s not even mad when Divya holds up a forkful and says, “First bite for the birthday boy,” and Cameron rolls his eyes but obliges. 

“It’s good, right? Whoever planned this party did an excellent fucking job.” 

“Yes he did,” Cameron says, and leans down to kiss Divya’s forehead. It so sweet and unshowy that Eduardo feels a little skeevy for having watched it happen. 

That at least he can blame on his parents as he backs up into the hallway, firmly removing himself from the Cameron-and-Divya bubble. He knows his parents loved each other, with a serious and quiet devotion that Eduardo can respect even if he doesn’t long for it himself, but maybe if they ever held hands in public or kissed each other on the way out the door he wouldn’t be all fucked up at a simple public display of affection in the middle of a house party. 

Understandably, not wanting to over-provide and encourage bad behaviour, the drinks that the twins had provided were entirely picked over, and Eduardo isn’t quite desperate enough to drink a mostly full PBR he finds abandoned on the patio. He manages to charm two coolers off of a graduated senior girl who was on her way out anyways, and he downs one of them in a long series of gulps that is in equal measure about avoiding the taste and getting himself off-kilter as quickly as possible. 

He’s sipping the second one, having first pulled the label off to help obscure the embarrassment of drinking a Mike’s Hard Watermelon, when he finds Mark with his legs in the hot tub. 

“Wardo,” Mark says, grinning up at him like they’d arranged to meet here. And Eduardo realizes belatedly that they had technically made plans to reconvene. “How did the retrieval mission go?” 

“Weirdly,” Eduardo admits, setting aside his drink so he can settle himself beside Mark, kicking off his shoes so they can be side by side with their legs in the water. It feels a little weird that the jets aren’t on, and he stares down at their pale feet side by side wishing that they were obscured a little more. It’s nice though, the evening having started to cool off enough that the water didn’t just feel like an extension of the humidity that had been hanging in the air earlier. 

Mark listens without interrupting all through Eduardo’s recount of what had happened upstairs, his face delightfully neutral, like his therapist. Only without the telltale scratching of a pen whenever he inadvertently stumbled into something that must reveal how deeply fucked up he actually was, or whatever. 

Mark’s lip does quirk a little bit though when he finally arrives at what he thinks is a pretty interesting reveal regarding Cameron and Divya trying long distance and the way they’d looked at each other in the kitchen that Eduardo couldn’t quite put into words other than, “I think they maybe. Actually kind of, might be in love?” 

“Well. Yeah,” Mark says, like this was the most obvious thing in the world. 

“What do you mean, ‘well, yeah’?” 

“Okay, come on Wardo,” Mark says, “You’re not going to hurt my feelings, you don’t have to keep this whole thing up.” 

Maybe he shouldn’t have chugged that cooler after all. 

“I’m— what?” 

Mark rolls his eyes melodramatically. “ _Nobody_ who dates up a grade _ever_ stays together. Oh Cameron and Divya are just _using each other_ and good for them. At least they’re _honest_.” 

Eduardo blinks, rewinds, comes up empty. “Mark, I literally don’t know what you’re trying to imply here.” 

Mark is unimpressed. “Really?” 

“I. Uh? Do you….like….Divya?” It seems like a long shot but it would _kind_ of make sense. Vaguely. Like Mark maybe thought he was the best friend in a rom com who was happy to tell you that the relationship you crush was in would never last. 

The look on Mark’s face is guarantee enough that this is _not_ the right answer. “Why the fuck would you think that?” 

“I’m just throwing darts in the fucking dark here man! I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me. I just thought they were going to break up, was that not obvious to everyone else!?” 

Mark goes very still, like he’s pulling himself into the centre of his body, even as he doesn’t physically move, and then after a long inhale he says, evenly, “So your weird Cameron and Divya soapbox, that was never about me?” 

“Why would it—” 

“It was never about making sure we were on the same page about what we were doing. It was never your _oh so subtle_ way of making sure I didn’t get my hopes up. You were just, being an asshole about two people being happy. Am I getting that correctly?” 

“Okay, wait, hey,” Eduardo says, his brain tripping like he just stood after sitting for a long time and his limbs had fallen asleep. “I’m _not—_ it just seemed— No, I. It wasn’t about _you_ Mark.” 

The silence stretches stiffly between them, annoyance and anger rolling off of Mark like rising air over hot pavement. 

“So you _are_ an asshole,” Mark says finally. 

“Well hey, okay, that’s not _fair_ —” 

“Not really up for debate,” Mark snaps, and he pulls his legs out of the hot tub, sending water flying in droplets across Eduardo’s torso. But sure, okay, _he’s_ the asshole. “I’m going home.” 

“Mark! Mark— wait,” he’s up and following after him, their two sets of wet footprints spreading across the concrete of the pool deck like ants on a picnic blanket. “I don’t know why you’re so upset.” 

Mark whirls back on his heel, his flip flops hanging from his hand like something dead, “Yeah, Eduardo that’s exactly the problem.” 

And then he’s gone, shoulders squared up around his ears as he breaks into a weird little jog around the side of the house. Eduardo can’t even go after him because his fucking shoes are back over by the hot tub. And honestly he’s not even sure he wants to go after him if Mark’s in the mood to give him puzzles and then turn on him when he can’t figure out the answers quick enough. 

“Hey man,” Tyler Winklevoss says, and it’s a testament to how out of it he is that Eduardo hadn’t heard someone that large come up behind him, “Everything okay?” 

“Yeah, fine,” Eduardo brushes him off, “I just need my—” 

Tyler holds out his deck shoes for him and Eduardo presses his mouth together tightly and nods curtly, trying to jam his feet back into them with some sense of dignity. 

“If you like, wanna crash here tonight that’s totally cool,” Tyler offers, all WASPishly accommodating. 

“It’s fine, I think I’m just going to head home— I have a DD,” Eduardo interjects when he can see that Tyler is about to interrupt him. 

It’s not strictly true, Eduardo’s plan had been to stop drinking early enough that he could be sobered up by the time he needed to drive home, but he knew Christy was planning to take Chris and Dustin home. He’d rather suck up the embarrassment of tagging along with them than have to bunk down on one of their basement couches, lulled to sleep by the rhythmic sounds of Cameron getting birthday sex several floors above. No fucking thank you. 

“Sure man, whatever works,” Tyler shrugs. 

It takes him a stupidly long time to track down Christy and Dustin, neither of whom are answering their texts, which just makes Eduardo seethe more and more the longer he searches. How _dare_ they be hooking up when his life is in shambles! He’s the one who introduced them in the first place! 

...Well. Wait. Christy and Dustin had definitely gone to the same middle school. But _still_. 

He walks in on at least three different couples and one trio before he finally checks Cameron and Tyler’s younger brother’s room, the one with the giant KEEP OUT sign, mostly just to check it off the list before he sends another angry text. 

He’s really not expecting to find Dustin curled up asleep on the twin size bed while Christy sits at the foot, scrolling through her phone, the blue light illuminating up at her the only light in the room. 

Somehow it’s kind of worse than if he’d walked in on them fucking. 

“Hey,” she says softly, “All good?” 

“ _Can you check your texts_ ,” he whisper-hisses as evenly as he can manage. “Chris and I have been trying to find you so we can leave for like. Forty-five minutes.” It’s an exaggeration, but given the fact that one time Christy called him in hysterics because he left her on read for an hour, he thinks he’s owed this at least a little bit. 

“What?” Christy says, frowning down at her phone, before turning it around to show Eduardo she has no new messages. “Oh, were you texting my old number? I got a new one a while after we broke up.” 

Goddammit. A reasonable explanation is _not_ what he wants right now. He forces himself to exhale slowly. 

“I guess I must have been, yeah.” 

She leans over and taps Dustin on the calf, “Okay cutie, this is your wake up call, we’ve gotta take the boys home.” 

Dustin mutters something into the pillow, but hoists himself up into a sitting position with a grunt. He genuinely seems more sleepy than drunk, leaning heavily between Eduardo and Christy as they head down the stairs, Eduardo texting Chris with his free hand. 

“What about your car?” Christy asks as they’re walking through the warm night around the gently curving streets of the Winklevosses’ affluent suburb. Chris has taken over supporting Dustin, the two of them enthusiastically messing up the words to some bubbly boy band song that had been playing on the radio all summer. 

Eduardo spreads his arms, gesturing at all the large darkened homes. “I think it’ll be fine.” 

Christy shrugs one-shouldered. “Your funeral.” 

Chris lives on the other side of the same suburb so they drop him off first, Christy leaning up over the wheel to make sure he gets inside the gate safely. 

“Charleston my love,” Dustin says dopily from the backseat, head lolling onto his seatbelt. 

“He calls Chris ‘Charleston’ because—” 

“—His email is C Hughes, like chughes, like chews, like Charleston Chews, yeah I know,” Christy says. “Shockingly I’m very up and up on Dustin’s in jokes with his best friend.” 

“Alright.” 

“Okay don’t get all moody about it,” Christy says, never one to cushion a blow. “I knew tons of fun facts about Mark when we were dating. I’m an _excellent_ girlfriend. Do you want to go through the McDonald’s drive-thru?” 

Jesus, now _that’s_ a classic Christy move if he ever saw one, throwing out a statement she knew would be controversial before _immediately_ changing the subject. But since he’s not really into the mood to get into a fight with her about her relative success as a girlfriend in _his_ experience, he just says, “Sure, okay,” because he does kind of want fries. 

Dustin is fast asleep by the time they pull in, but Christy still orders him McNuggets with sweet and sour dipping sauce and wraps the box snuggly in the bag before tucking it in the backseat beside him. 

“So,” Christy says, licking the back of her McFlurry spoon. “Mark went home early?” 

Eduardo sips at his shake. He’s heard McDonald’s ice cream machine horror stories, but nothing has yet scared him enough to lure him away from the siren song of their strawberry shakes. “Yeah he’s not very happy with me.” 

“What’d you do?” 

“ _Nothing_ ,” he snaps. “He just got all mad and wouldn’t tell me why.” 

“Mhmm.” 

“What?” 

“I didn’t say anything,” Christy says. The windshield is starting to fog a little bit and it makes Eduardo think about the drive-in which is a very dangerous thing to start thinking about. 

“But…?” 

“But,” Christy says, and then sighs, “Look Wardo, I don’t want to be like, a total jerk about this because like, it all worked out, but you are not an easy person to get close to.” 

“Okaaaay.” 

Christy pulls her ponytail over her shoulder. “It’s like— okay. You tend to make a lot of assumptions about why other people do things and then you are always _stunned_ when it turns out that was just a You Thing and nobody else was doing that in the first place.” 

Eduardo rolls this over in his mind, it doesn’t feel _right_ exactly, but maybe she’s got something vaguely approaching a point. “Okay, can you give me an example?” 

“I mean besides our whole relationship,” Christy says around a mouthful of ice cream and oreo pieces. “And the fact that you were always insinuating that we were doing some mutually beneficial ‘Arrangement,’” she makes actual air quotes around it. 

“Yeah but it _was_ ,” Eduardo says. “We liked spending time with each other, it’s nice having a set date for dances and things, we were attracted to each other. How is that not mutually beneficial?”

“Sure, but I wasn’t dating you because of those things,” Christy says in a rush, “Eduardo I _liked_ you. Like I had actual mushy feelings for you and you were constantly reminding me that you didn’t feel the same way.” 

“Obviously that’s not true,” he corrects, even though Eduardo hadn’t fully realized until this moment that. Yeah. He’d had feelings for Christy. Of course he had. But that wasn’t— it wasn’t a good enough reason to _date_ someone on that alone. “I just think, I mean no one marries the person they date in high school, Chris. Or if they do it ends in a horrible fiery divorce.” 

“My parents literally started dating in high school,” Christy says.

“Oh,” Eduardo says. “Well that’s— that’s not _normal_.” 

“See this is what I’m talking about. You have all this baggage from the fact that your dad has been married three times and that your mom’s job is literally wooing people out of their money.” 

“She does _endowments_ for arts organizations, it’s a lot more structured than just sucking up to rich people.” 

“Either way, you’re out here thinking you’re that bitch who travels with just a carry-on.” 

Eduardo blinks. “What does that even—” 

“It means that not _acknowledging_ that you have baggage, and not _having_ baggage aren’tthe same thing.” 

Eduardo takes a loud long sip of his shake to avoid having to reply, and when he finally does he says. “My dad’s only been married twice actually.” 

“My mistake,” Christy says sweetly, putting her empty McFlurry cup in the cupholder. “I’m not saying you’re like, irredeemably fucked up or something. I’m just saying maybe you gotta take some of this into account a little more.” 

“I guess,” Eduardo says, still bristling. Maybe Christy has some insights, but it’s not really making the Mark situation any clearer, and he resents the hanging implications that his alleged baggage is somehow the ultimate problem and not the fact that Mark won’t _tell him anything_. 

Which isn’t normally a problem with Mark, they don’t talk about stuff like this, and they’ve never really had to. Eduardo always thought that was a sign of their closeness, but now he’s not so sure, his stomach turning over in what hopefully might just be some under cleaned ice cream machine botulism. 

“So, what? Is Dustin like, the baggageless boychik of your dreams then?” 

“All only children are inherently a little fucked up,” Christy says, “plus I’ve had a front row seat to all his cousin drama this summer. The first time we ever hung out one-on-one he cried in front of me about how he feels like he’s not allowed to fail now.” 

“Ah yes,” Eduardo nods, even though he only half-remembers what was going on with Dustin’s cousin, Asher. Some kind of college drama that had led to him dropping out and moving in with Dustin’s family for what had seemed like a temporary amount of time and had dragged well into the summer. 

He knew Dustin wasn’t thrilled about it, but it had never seemed like that much of a big deal either. He makes a mental note to ask Dustin about it next time he’s killing time at the drive-in. 

Or maybe that’s off limits if Mark’s mad at him. He has no idea what the boundaries are because he has no idea what he did. 

“Maybe I just need to cry on more first dates,” Eduardo says finally. 

“S’worked great,” Dustin says groggily from the backseat, rubbing at his face. “Do we live at McD’s now?” 

“Eat your chicken nuggets, the grown ups are talking.” 

“I call dibs on the Play Place,” Dustin yawns. 

Eduardo still hasn’t heard from Mark by Monday, and his two attempts at reaching out have been met with empty silence. He could swing by the Zuckerbergs’ and see if Mark will deign him with an audience. But Eduardo has always kind of gotten the sense that Mark’s parents think he’s a potentially Corrupting Influence, and he’s sure Mark’s mom would have no problem lying on his behalf if Mark asked, so that feels like kind of a dead end. 

By Wednesday he’s run out of odd jobs he’s been putting off all summer and ends up cleaning out his school email just for something to do, deleting old email chains about group projects and trying not to look too hard at one off in-joke emails from Mark. By the time he’s done dumping everything there’s a new email at the top and he tries not to be too disappointed that it’s just his senior class schedule.

He generally doesn’t put as much effort into perfecting his class schedule since his closest friends are all a grade younger, so he’s about to click away when a thought strikes him and he impulsively opens a new email and types: N-A-R until Divya’s email pops up. 

_We have anything together?_

_E.S._

He waits five minutes, feels stupid for thinking Divya was going to reply immediately, gets up to get a glass of water, taking the long way back to his room for no reason other than to kill time and feels vindicated when he comes back to a reply. 

_AP calc, AP physics, AP biochem, and music appreciation._

_Regards,_

_Divya Narendra_

_“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” – **Milton Berle**_

_Well I’m glad we both decided we deserved one easy class at least._

_(What’s up with your email signature? You don’t strike me as a quotable quotes guy)_

_E.S._

_Oh that was a tip Ty got from a recruiter, it’s like submitting your resume in Garamond. Anything that makes you stick out a little, you know?_

_Regards,_

_Divya Narendra_

_“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” – **Milton Berle**_

That startles a laugh out of Eduardo, but hey Tyler Winklevoss got into Harvard, who is Eduardo to judge his methods. Speaking of. 

_If you’re thinking of hitting up a fall open house we should definitely carpool._

_E.S._

_Attachment(s): fall/winter_recruitment.pdf_

Divya doesn’t reply for fifteen minutes so Eduardo wonders if maybe he’s hit a little too close to the bone with the twins having just left town, so he goes and makes himself a snack so he doesn’t get all in his head about ruining another friendship before it even started. It just kind of felt like after the mortifying embarrassment of what had happened in the twins’ bathroom they’d opened up the possibility of being, maybe not _friends_ exactly but mutually beneficial acquaintances or something. 

Divya could _definitely_ use some of those now that he was off the Winklevoss meal ticket for the time being and— 

Oh. 

Okay. 

Maybe Christy had had more of a point the other night than he’d given her credit for. Fuck. 

It probably shouldn’t feel as much like victory as it does when Eduardo wakes up his laptop and there’s a new unread email. 

_That would be awesome actually. I’ll check out the dates and get back to you._

_-Div_

He rereads it three times, and something so mundane shouldn’t feel so monumental, but it hits him sort of slowly that this is the first time in a long time he’s had to actually make the jump on initiating something with someone. Mark&Dustin&Chris had been the ones to adopt him, Christy had asked him out, and he spends most days hoping and praying that his dad will _stop_ inviting him to intergenerational cliff diving retreats. 

Even his thing with Mark, he hadn’t so much initiated as just picked up where Mark had led him. 

He chews on his lip, considering all this for a long moment before switching to his personal email and pulling up, wonder of wonders, Yelp.com. 

On Wednesday morning Eduardo wakes up to another round of promising emails and his brother Lucas sitting at the kitchen island. Which would be unremarkable if not for the fact that Lucas lives several thousand miles away. 

“Oh hey bro,” he says, mouth full, “You want me to make you a smoothie bowl?” 

“I’m good,” Eduardo says. “Uh, what are you doing here?” 

“Dad had to fly out to deal with some estate stuff with Jules, so I’m filling in as arm candy for your mom’s gala thing since you have work and she didn’t want to go alone.” 

“Oh,” Eduardo says. “That’s nice that you’re doing that.” 

Lucas shrugs, “Your mom’s a cool lady, and what else am I up to? Honestly it’s just nice to get out of the house and there’s only so much Marina and Julian will put up with me moping around their place.” He shoves his spoon around in his smoothie bowl, and it’s such a familiar gesture of post-breakup sadness that it startles Eduardo a little bit. 

His whole life his brothers have always been old enough that they’ve been in an entirely different and often unrelatable stage of life than him, but it’s weird to see that gap actively starting to close. When Lucas got married it felt like such an adult and far off thing, but seeing him now, still clearly smarting from the breakup and feeling lonely, that’s uncomfortably familiar.

“Well if you’re gonna be around,” Eduardo says, pulling granola down from the cupboard, “Maybe you could give me a ride to work tonight? My mom usually wants the SUV after an event ‘cause we always end up with a million centrepieces or a balloon arch or something, and I hate driving her car.” 

“Absolutely,” Lucas says, grinning at him, and he doesn’t get all weird when Eduardo hugs him from behind, patting his hands affectionately. 

He spends the rest of the day trying to stay as busy as possible because whenever he stops for more than a few minutes he starts getting overwhelmed by the tidal wave of dread which is having to see Mark again. Alternating worst case scenarios of Mark either blowing up at him or Mark giving him the cold shoulder as he rearranges his desk drawers and finally goes through his old notes from last year. He sets aside any of them he thinks might be helpful for one of the rising juniors and shreds the rest before ending up back on his bed, scrolling aimlessly on Instagram. 

Eduardo hates the way he practically jolts off his bed when Lucas emerges in the doorway, and says, “You ready to jet junior?” 

He’s so stressed he doesn’t even bother lashing back on the nickname, just wipes his palms on the bottom of his shirt and hands over his keys. 

“I can’t believe you actually have a job,” Lucas says once they’re out onto the main road. “It’s so adorable.” 

“Oh fuck _off_ ,” Eduardo says, but there’s no heat under it. 

“No, no, it’s a good thing,” he says. “Kind of proves you’re a better person than the rest of us.” 

“Uh, how so exactly?” 

Lucas blusters his lips together as he exhales. “Okay, so _don’t_ tell pai about this, but I had the same summer job arrangement as you right? Get a job, donate your salary and get 10k at the end of the summer.” 

“Yeaaaah,” Eduardo says, trying to keep his voice level. 

“Well uh, so when _I_ was in high school I just lied about it and donated out of my monthly allowance. Seemed like a better use of money to buy myself a summer of freedom.” 

“Oh. Sure,” Eduardo agrees, running over the odds that this is some sort of elaborate scheme to corner him into admitting what he’s done. He resists the urge to look over his shoulder for a hidden camera, or one of his brother’s lurking in the backseat, ready to accuse him of youngest child favouritism yet again. “I bet uh, Julian wasn’t impressed.” 

“Are you kidding? He was the one who started it, I was just following in his footsteps. And then of course it felt like our brotherly duty to get Ari off the hook too,” Lucas laughs. 

“I’m sorry I guess we sort of dropped the ball on you.” 

“I— yeah,” he says, mind reeling. 

They all did _exactly the same thing_ , and he’d stepped up and followed suit without even needing it explained to him. 

Eduardo’s always felt that deep down he’s been offset from his brothers in a meaningful way. He’s the one who got the stable nuclear family, he’s the one who was supposed to escape all the weird baggage that makes Julian&Lucas&Ari the way that they are. Just a little less than ideal. 

But no here he is, last in line, &Eduardo. 

“Hey,” Lucas says, reaching over and giving him a squeeze on the forearm. “I’m sure you made the right choice for you.” 

“I hope so,” Eduardo says, and tries to breathe like a person who is not having his third life crisis in less than a week. He thinks he sounds okay by the time Lucas drops him off behind the concession building, giving a friendly little honk as he executes one of the worst three point turns Eduardo has ever seen, and drives off. 

He feels exposed and underprepared, the manilla folder tucked under his arm already starting to warp from his body heat. The lobby is empty when he walks in, and he didn’t realize how much he was betting on the buffer of Dustin until he’s not there in his familiar spot behind the counter. The door to the projection room is propped open ever so slightly however, so Eduardo swallows and reaches out for it, fingers tapping cautiously on the cool metal. 

“Yeah? What?” Mark says, and Eduardo feels all of the veins in his body go wildly spooling themselves up into his ribcage. 

He eases the door open with his foot and lets it fall closed behind him with a soft hushing thud. It’s dim in the room, the only light from a small desk light and the waning daylight coming through the projection window. He blinks, adjusting from the brightness of the lobby. 

“Did you need something?” Mark asks, not looking up from where he’s writing on a looseleaf piece of paper clamped down on a clipboard. 

“Uh, yeah, actually,” Eduardo says, voice covering the slack from where his body is trying to betray him. 

Mark’s back clenches, but he recovers so quickly Eduardo feels like he might have imagined it as he turns in his chair. “This is employees only.” 

“Yeah,” Eduardo says. “Look can we— If you’re still upset with me, I think I get it now. But I also think I get some leeway here on account of you not actually _telling_ me, so even if you’re still kind of pissed I think I deserve to be heard out. Okay?” 

Mark’s mouth twists, unfurls, and says, “Okay.” 

“Have you ever, started doing something the shortcut way so many times that you sort of forget there’s an actual proper way of doing it? Actually yeah, I know you do because I know you use fucking 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner, so I know you know what I mean.” 

“Really off to a great start here Wardo.” 

Eduardo rubs his eyes. “Okay, but my point is that just because I got lazy in how I was doing something doesn’t mean I _can’t_ do it the real way. Do you understand what I’m saying?” 

“I know the literal meaning of the words you are saying.” 

“So, no then. Okay.” 

Mark huffs, his cheeks look harsh and sunken in the low light, “Can you please hurry up with wherever this is going because, I’m supposed to train the new guy tonight and I don’t think you being here and having a breakdown is going to be a particularly conducive environment.” 

Eduardo pulls at the hair at the nape of his neck, he’s pretty sure Mark isn’t being intentionally obstructive, but it doesn’t change the fact that it feels pretty damn well that he is. He exhales and thinks about what his mom always tells him when he’s getting frustrated with something. Go back to the very beginning and make it as simple as possible. 

“Do you think I would have been your friend if we hadn’t been at that stupid orientation together?” 

Mark tilts his chin definitely, “No, actually. I don’t think you would have been my friend if I hadn’t met you at orientation.” 

“Yeah that’s what I figured,” he nods. “I think that’s what I would have probably said too if someone had asked me a week ago. But it’s not a week ago anymore Mark, and I think we were both wrong.” 

“Really?” 

“Really. Yeah. I think...I would have known something was missing and circled back until I got you to pick me again.” 

Mark tightens up again, narrowing the breadth of his rib cage and pulls his arms in close to himself. “Pretty convenient for you to have figured that out _now_ —” 

“Mark—” 

“—after you made it perfectly clear that we were not — nor have we _ever_ been - anything more but fucking, friends with benefits of convenience. That you hadn’t even _considered_ that maybe there would be some fucking _grey area_ there for me.” 

“Mark, I know, I _know_ ,” Eduardo says. 

“It’s like you’re not even a real fucking person sometimes Wardo, the way you talk about other people.” He can tell Mark is biting at the inside of his cheek and Eduardo wishes he knew the right thing to do, the right place he could touch him on his face and everything would just _click_ and be okay.

He used to be so good at seeing the shortcuts, now he can’t even find the path. He stares at Mark, and he hopes he doesn’t actually look as pathetic as he feels. He knows the next serve is his, but he’s frozen in place, hoping Mark will take pity on him and cross the line. 

“Okay, what the fuck is going on with the folder,” Mark blurts finally. “I feel like you’re going to show me photos of my wife cheating on me with the milkman.” 

“Oh, it’s uh,” Eduardo says, flapping it open awkwardly. “It’s my new employee paperwork.” 

Mark’s eyebrows crease, and he watches the realization snap into place. They’ve always had the pieces, but now they’re interlinked. 

“I figured if he said no it was a good excuse to brush up my resume, right?” 

“Wardo,” Mark says, and it comes off almost like a warning, and then he’s pushing right up into Eduardo’s space and the folder is going toppling out of his hands.

“I can’t believe you never told me your boss was named _Chayton Fivecoat_ ,” Eduardo manages out before Mark’s leaning up into him and his hands are clenched in Eduardo’s shirt. 

“Real job for a real boy,” Mark says and then he’s pushing up on his toes and sighing into Eduardo’s mouth and Eduardo kind of wants to go back in time and punch his former self for not appreciating the revelation that is having all of Mark’s focus redirected into kissing him back when he’d gotten it so freely. His thumbs are pressing in tight little circles against his jaw and Eduardo opens his mouth wider for him, Mark making an appreciative little noise and pushing forward. 

A little too much as Mark knocks him off kilter and Eduardo takes a shuffling half step back, hand coming up to brace on Mark’s back. He’s so warm through his shirt and Eduardo pushes down the urge to map his hands under it. 

It’s much more cinematic and epic in his mind when he hoists up Mark by the back of his thighs and sets him on top of the projectionist desk, but despite Mark’s surprised yelp and scattered office supplies he seems into it, catching Eduardo under the jaw and kissing him with deep determination.

“Let’s be real, okay,” Eduardo says, maybe a little lightheaded and a little hysterical, but fuck he doesn’t care. “Let’s be real together.” 

“Wardo,” Mark says, and he sounds a little sad, but sad in the way people sound when they’re remembering something fondly. “It was always real, idiot.” 

“You were,” Eduardo says, and mouths at the soft skin just under Mark’s ear. He feels like he’s rediscovered an entirely new sense he’d been living without now that he can touch Mark like this. Now that he has permission and all the pieces are finally locked snugly into place. 

Mark kisses him again, fleetingly and sweet. “I guess I should probably show you the ropes, especially since,” he checks his watch, “we’ve been on the clock for the last four minutes.” 

“Probably,” Eduardo agrees and curls his hands against where the fabric of Mark’s shirt bunches at his hips. Which is a totally neutral and practically platonic move, so he cannot be held accountable when Mark groans and pulls him back in frantically. 

And hey if the first movie starts a few minutes late who can blame him for enabling such behaviour? Eduardo is a romantic after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to youshallnotfinditso for the incredible beta job and also for being the best friend and collaborator I could ever ask for. Rest assured I would not have managed 10 TSN fics in a year if it weren't for her, you're the best <3 
> 
> Find me on tumblr where I'm also phonecallfromgod.


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